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| Case Study: “Your Mileage May Vary:” Creating Reliable Comparisons of IP Cores |
By BDTI, 8/20/2008
An attractive attribute of licensable processor cores is the flexibility chip designers have to adapt these cores to their chosen fabrication process, cell library, tool flow, logic synthesis goals and other conditions. In other words, chip designers can tune the core to the needs of a particular application and to their preferred chip design methodology. An unfortunate side effect of this flexibility is that it can be extremely difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons between licensable cores.
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| Case Study: Building Credibility for Multimedia Solutions |
By BDTI, 7/23/2008
As multimedia systems grow in complexity, system and SoC developers increasingly rely on vendors to provide “solutions”—combinations of hardware and software that together implement complete multimedia functions such as audio and video compression and decompression. This has created a new challenge for system and SoC developers: vendors’ claims about the functionality and performance of their solutions are difficult to interpret and often impossible to compare.
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| Case Study: Creating Super-efficient Embedded Software |
By BDTI, 6/18/2008
Digital signal processing algorithms are increasingly important in an expanding range of embedded systems. For example, compute-intensive multimedia functions are finding their way into applications from toys to appliances to telephones.
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| Case Study: Making Compilers Smarter |
By BDTI, 5/28/2008
Fifteen years ago DSP engineers expected to write and optimize most of their software in assembly language, and they did it on DSP processors with obscure and highly specialized instruction sets. Back then, compilers for DSP processors were inefficient and couldn’t use many of the processors’ specialized performance-improving features. If you wanted to use bit-reversed addressing or circular buffers or fill delay slots, for example, you’d have to write that code yourself.
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| Case Study: Where Does Your Processing Engine Fit In? |
By BDTI, 4/23/2008
Developing a new signal processing engine is expensive and risky, particularly for a small start-up or for an established company moving into an unfamiliar market. There are good reasons to take that risk: signal processing has become ubiquitous in a wide range of application areas, and offers the potential for high revenues. The flip side is that the market is already densely populated with all kinds of signal processing engines: single-core chips, multi-core chips, massively parallel processors, DSP-enhanced FPGAs, SoCs, etc. Depending on the specific target market, a new processor may find itself going head-to-head with some or all of these classes of competitor.
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| Case Study: Shoehorning Maximum Signal Processing into Minimal Processors |
By BDTI, 3/19/2008
Digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms are increasingly important in embedded systems. For example, compute-intensive multimedia functions are finding their way into applications ranging from toys to appliances to telephones. But in many of these systems, cost constraints dictate a processor with very minimal horsepower and limited—or no—signal-processing-specific features.
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| Case Study: Change or Be Changed: Good Business Decisions Require Good Information |
By BDTI, 2/27/2008
The electronics industry has long been a dynamic one, but never as dynamic as it is today. Private equity investors now own some of the largest semiconductor companies and are pushing for improved efficiencies. Many, if not most, of the largest chip companies are making significant adjustments in their strategies. And, as usual, changes in technology—often driven by innovative start-ups—threaten to disrupt the status quo.
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| Case Study: Multi-Tiered Software Optimization |
By BDTI, 1/23/2008
While nearly all signal processing applications require some degree of software optimization, some applications require a sophisticated, multi-tiered optimization approach in order to meet their performance goals.
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| Case Study—BDTI Benchmarks Help Vendors Win New Customers |
By BDTI, 12/19/2007
Smaller fabless chip vendors face an uphill battle: to beat out larger rivals, they must attract the attention of potential customers, prove the advantages of their products, and demonstrate that they will be reliable, long-term partners. One such company recently used BDTI Benchmarks to accomplish all three of these objectives.
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| Case Study - Optimizing Presentations, Products, and Plans |
By BDTI, 11/14/2007
The best way to ensure that a presentation is effective is to test it with a knowledgeable, critical, and responsive audience. A test audience can also help ensure that the content is correct, relevant, and appropriate for the intended audience. Just as important, a test audience can help presenters gauge the clarity, appeal, and impact of their pitch. After all, superb technical content serves no purpose if the audience loses interest a few minutes into the presentation.
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